gawker.com -- Who says blogs don't do journalism? According to Politico, Arianna Huffington sent reporter Jason Cherkis to Austin this summer to chase down persistent rumors that Perry has had gay liaisons. But she pulled the plug, she told Politico, when it became clear that "it was not a publishable story." Politico's Ken Vogel suggests it had more to do with the Perry campaign's decision to hire fearsome libel attorney Lin Wood, who is quickly becoming the go-to lawyer to shut down unwanted stories.

Listen to the Radio War Nerd podcast [subscribe here] with guest Gunnar Hrafn Jonsson of Iceland Public Radio on the massacre in Orlando and how online Islamic State jihadis are dealing with battlefield defeats and the shrinking caliphate. Subscribe to Radio War Nerd through the show’s Patreon page.

The political establishment’s racist, authoritarian reaction to the 1992 LA riots—blaming broken black families, massing cops and troops, and Ron Paul’s advice to his family on how to kill black “animals” and get away with it…